Week 9 We made it!

 

Thank you to an awesome bunch of colleagues and tutors.  This week has seen the end of 9 weeks of DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive).  What a great learning experience for me and also a period of extreme learning and growth.  

Today for the final day was a 3 hour exam.  This was not easy.  Firstly sitting for 3 hours without a break and in front of the computer was painful.  I didn't realise how hard that part would be.  When I did eventually stand up and stretch I realised I must have been hunched forward over my computer for the majority of the 3 hours.  Second I had to slow down and check what the questions were actually asking.  Something I repeatedly am reminding the students to do.  Lastly it is alot of focus time, without a break.  As with everything it was a good chance to experience what the students go through when sitting for long periods and having to focus.

Week 8 Other Devices and Apps

This week our Manaiakalani Pedagogy focus was on Ubiquitous.  Yes I had to Google the meaning.  For those like me the meaning I found was that it is existing or being everywhere.  The meaning for Maniakalani  is the four A's, the idea that our young people are able to learn Anywhere, Anytime,  at Any pace and from Anyone.  This is especially important during our Covid times.

Today we were learning to use a chromebook and an I Pad.  I found the Chromebook harder to use than my lap top.  It was smaller and not as comfortable for me.  The I Pad was great to use and for this we focussed on using the Explain Everything App.  This was great and I could see so much potential for the app with students I work with.  Also the touch screen was fast and easy to use.

With what I have learned throughout this course the Google Sites and Google Meet is what I have found most useful and would have found very useful for me to connect with my learners during lockdown.

Next week is the ezam so wish me luck and I will let you know how I get on.

Week 7 Close To Home

What a treat being close to home this week in the beautiful Waitangi Treaty Grounds with lunch at Whare Waka Café.

This weeks takeaway from computational thinking for me was that we need to make sure we enable our students to be digital creators not just digital users. By making our students digitally fluent they can then decide what is the best way/program to use to learn, show case or complete their work. This hopefully will set them up to be adaptable in the future with any and all advancements in technology to come. Also we should be using the word programming not coding so that in the future our students can apply the same steps to future projects and other programs that they may use and not just the one program they have learnt to use that day.

Empowerment was todays focus within the Manaiakalani pedagogy - my understanding is that we need to empower all of our students, colleagues and whanau with the knowledge they need to be successful, because knowledge is power and moving forward everyone has the right to feel empowered and have the same opportunities to learn regardless of where they come.

The create part of the day had Jane and I getting quite excited about our Stop Motion Animation, although we needed a bit of help at the end because we managed to lose half of the animation. Making the animation was a lot more engaging for me than I thought it would be, especially when we came up with good ideas. I liked the shadowing of the last move you made so if you accidently knocked your character (in this case Lego man), you could use the shadowing to place him back exactly where you took the last photo. See below for our animation. Credits Jane Lindsay😉

I have struggled with trying to put voice instruction on my Google site. Firstly I used voice memo on my phone, then emailed it to myself, then downloaded it to my drive then embedded into my Google Site. What was shared with me today is the app Mote which I can use on my computer through Google Slides to record my voice. Phew what a time saver.

Week 6 Connecting (DFI)

This week’s discussion was based around being connected.  The main part of this I reflected on was before being connected digitally schools were only connected competitively.  When thinking about this I had a bit of a wow moment and realized this to be true.  Previous connections were through sports, kapa haka and other activities with a competitive nature.  

To connect we need to be present and put ourselves out there, also empower others to be able to connect with us.  If we are connecting with people outside of our circle then we are teaching and learning new ideas and ways of doing things.

My keyboard shortcut for the week is Ctrl K to automatically get a hyperlink, another shortcut I will be using from now on with confidence.

It was a great opportunity today to look through other class/school sites and evaluate them.  I am feeling a bit more motivated to work on and focus on the visual features of the site I have created alongside the functionality.

Today I both enjoyed and struggled changing the pictures on the Google Site I have created for a student.  I enjoyed finding new and more interesting pictures to capture the students' attention and interest.  I struggled to resize the pictures to fit into the appropriate size headers, which was frustrating but I persevered and on attempt number 10 got it. The site I was using to get the pictures, (Pixabay) was great and had a lot of catchy pictures.

I am looking forward to using what I have learnt this week to remember to always include multimodal content in my Google Site as well as in the classroom.

See you next week

Week 5 Collaboration

Welcome back bloggers. This week we in our DFI (Digital Fluency Intensive), have focused on collaboration. One of the main points was visibility. Visibility of learning for the students. I found this interesting and upon reflecting on this I focused on what that might look like in class. By this I mean does each student know what their next steps are and what they are working towards? Is there somewhere they can go to see these steps that are personal to them and their learning? Would you put this in the class visually for all students, or should it be more of a private, this is me and what I need to focus on.

On reflection I think the visibility is great but feel it is something each student should have rather than something on the class wall which shows, I’m here and my friends are way up here which can demoralize that student that is struggling. This possibly causes a lack of care and interest in that student.

Google Sites has been an area I was interested in learning about. From what I have learnt today I am going to go away and make a plan for a Google site with links for a student I work with. The student needs a visual daily planner and up until this stage this has been on paper. I would also like to add a page to show his progress in videos etc., for his whanau to be able to connect to his learning. So this will be my goal for next week.

Tricks I have used today include being able to screenshot the images I want. This has been incredibly handy today so I am looking forward to utilizing this in and out of class when needed, without having to ask for help.

Setting up the Google Site I am keen to try this for other activities. This will make it easier to have everything on one page/site and not having to go from one page to another to find what I/students need to be successful.



Catch you next week and I will let you know how it went.

Link to my Planning Link to my Google Site

 

Week 3 Create

This week going over create has reinforced for me as a new learner to actually creating digitally rather than just marking and commenting on those creations from students has been an eye opener. I realize how easy it is to get stuck on one idea or way of creating because that is what you know rather than exploring new and more interesting ways. This takes time that we don't necessarily give or have in class in one given year. So my thoughts are this needs to start earlier when students are in the junior school so that we are empowering them to be more creative each year.

I feel more confident already on being able to develop better digital creations which also means I feel I can be more helpful when it comes to empowering our students who may struggle in this area. The time it took me to do one simple create which was a Pick a Path was a learning curb. Do we give our students enough time to be creative or are we just wanting something done. while doing the Pick a Path I struggled with a plot. So I had to Google story plots and once I saw one that attracted my attention the writing was much simpler. This is a reflection for me on our students who may be good at literacy as this doesn't mean they will find ideas a simple task.

Blog you next week.

Week 2 Reflection DFI

Welcome back to week 2 of my DFI blogging.  This week we were focused on the learn part of Learn-Create-Share.  The most important part of this discussion for me was, empowerment.  It was a good reminder to  make sure when I am working with students that I am doing it in a way that empowers them to take control of their learning and be a successful learner.  Sometimes in the rush of everything going on and work needing to be finished this can become a bit lost.  But a gentle reminder of this every now and then helps me to re-focus as a kaiawhina. 

Taming my tabs and pinning was a great way to clean up my laptop to make it easier to switch from student to student or topic to topic without too much drama.  This will be very helpful during class time, especially when you  have a queue of students wanting work checked.  I have also set up Toby on my computer to organize groups of tabs, this has been very useful so far and speaks to my need to 2 organize in general.

Google Meet - I struggled a bit here due to technical difficulties unfortunately but managed to organize a Meet with a colleague eventually.  I find I push my face into the screen so need to learn to sit back and relax.  The setting up is still a bit confusing but I'm hoping that with practice next week I will nail it.  

My goal is to set up a Google Meet with a student I work one on one with, to encourage him to be able to work from home if the need ever arises.  I will keep you posted as to how this goes.